Better Materia System

[Shougun]

You people realize that anytime you remove randomness in one place, SE will / you have to

1) add more randomness somewhere else (e.g. rare drops)
2) Make the process require more time and effort.

If neither of these things are done, melding becomes too easy, requires no effort or time, and the value of everything will crash.

There's already incentive: It's cheaper. I used lower tier materia until I was able to afford better ones.

You and I obviously have very different ideas as to what constittutes expensive. Well-melded useful weapons cost tens of millions, and that's just with 2-3 materia. If people tried and could afford to try to go for 3-5 melds the prices of those would be astronomical. The only reason you don't see it is because people don't do it (becuase its too expensive to attempt)
I rarely have more than 1-2 million on me at a time. I can't drop 10 mil here, 5 mil there, 20 mill here like you can apparently.

I agree with this post, and I am taking out 1)* but adding in a lot more 2).

* gathering and crafters are needed for some of the ingredients a materia master would use - so not all RNG is out but the 5% melds to destroy or make a weapon would be gone.

I usually have around ~4 mil. and like you its crazy to see 10 mil weapons. What I would like to see is 1 or 2 mil materia and a mil or so sword. That way you can buy your sword at a combined price of 5 mil or slowly add in guaranteed 1 mil materia as you make the money. I'm not try to destroy an economy just make it consistent and easy* for us less then 20 hours a week players (consistent prices, not easy prices but prices you can count on - the random % on weapons makes all the double + meld items go for extremely varying amounts).

*Because the only reason why the weapon costed 10 mil in the first place is because of the %, thats why I said the market shouldnt of existed in the first place.